It’s
time to ditch the ‘one China’
fiction and normalize relations with Taiwan

Taiwanese president-elect
Tsai Ing-wen in New Taipei City on March 18. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

ByGary
SchmittMay 18 at 7:10 PM

Gary Schmitt is co-director of
the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at the American Enterprise
Institute.

On Friday,Tsai
Ing-wenwill besworn inas president of Taiwan,
having won by 25 percentage points over her nearest competitor. In addition to
being the first woman to hold the office, Tsai will be the fourth president
selected by popular vote. Her inauguration will also mark the third time the
presidency has been passed from one party to another. By virtually any
reasonable standard, the Republic of China has become a normal democratic
country. Yet its relationship with the United States is anything but normal.

Indeed, if you were to try to
explain Washington’s Taiwan policy to someone from
another planet, you surely would get a puzzled look. Largely shaped by
decisions made during the 1970s and early 1980s, during a completely different
strategic era and at a time when Taiwan was a one-party state with pretensions
to someday rule over all of mainland China, Washington’s
policy is a relic of a bygone era. It seems we can bring Cuba in from the cold
but not Taiwan.

Typically, U.S. policymakers
see Taiwan as a problem. But the nation has a number of qualities that should
make it a contributor to the United States’ strategic position in Asia.
First, it has become a model of democratic governance. Taiwan is deemed “free” byFreedom Houseand gets high marks for its level of civil and
political rights. Second, it remains an important economy, the United States’ ninth-largesttrading partner and home
to some of the globe’s most innovative companies.

Third, if the United States’“pivot” to Asia is to be taken
seriously, then Taiwan, an island nation sitting astride vital sea-trade lanes
and between two U.S. allies (Japan and the Philippines), can hardly be ignored.
An intelligent defense plan would help build Taiwan into a key link in East
Asia’s “first island chain,”
lessening the ability of Chinese air and naval forces to move into the broader
Pacific and threaten U.S. forces at sea and on Guam.

The United States’ policy toward Taiwan remains stuck in neutral because of
a reluctance to put aside the fiction of “one China”: the idea that both the
People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the
Republic of China claim sovereignty over both the Chinese mainland and the
islands of Formosa, Kinmen and Matsu. The people of Taiwan have made it quite
clear they have neither the ambition to rule the mainland nor even any
inclination to unify with the PRC under the rubric of “one country, two systems.” To the contrary,polls
consistently showthat the percentage of Taiwanese
who identify as exclusively “Chinese” has dropped to single digits —
a trend that is no doubt generated and deepened by every election with the
practice of self-rule.

Nor is there any appeal left to
the “one country, two systems” formula, originally proposed
by the PRC’s Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s,
by which Beijing would exercise sovereignty generally but allow areas such as
Hong Kong and Taiwan to retain their distinct political and economic systems.
Putting aside the fact that this formula was barely conceivable even when
Taiwan was still a one-party state like the mainland, Hong Kong’s increasingly unhappy experience since falling under PRC
sovereignty in 1997 has eliminated any confidence among Taiwanese that Beijing
would keep its hands off the island’s democracy.

During her campaign and time as
president-elect, Tsai has made it clear that she has no intention of roiling
the waters with the PRC by pushing forward with an explicit claim of
independence. But there is little doubt that a U.S. policy to further normalize
relations with Taiwan would increase tensions with Beijing. Even now, the PRC
is once again in the business of trying to coerce Taipei’s
few remaining partners into abandoning diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and
attempting to use the “one China” principle as a condition for Taipei participating in
meetings of U.N. institutions, such as the World Health Organization.

However, it is an illusion to
think there is a way forward that does not involve tension with the PRC. As the
past few years of Chinese behavior have made clear, strategic competition is
inevitable and is understood as such in Beijing. The only question is whether
we use all of our assets or fail to, as the Chinese employ all of theirs.

Answering this question is all
the more urgent in light of the more assertive and ambitious policies of China’s current leader, Xi Jinping. Failing to support Taiwan
will not ease tensions but only invite greater instability and uncertainty
among allies and potential allies in the region.

It is in the United States’ interest to strengthen ties with Taiwan militarily,
economically and diplomatically. Given Taiwan’s democracy, it is also the
right thing to do.